Editor at the Graun makes £450k.

It's news when some of the biggest and wealthiest companies in the us do not pay their staff (regardless of work, regardless of contractor status) a livable wage.

I think it's useful to look beyond the symptoms of the problem and instead to examine the source: the SF Bay Area's residential zoning is just terrible. It actively works against high density residential housing. It's the main bottleneck for affordable housing.

I would think it better for Facebook to pay a living wage, and push to lower the cost of living so they can then pay less, instead of paying less and letting their employees hope that the situation will somehow solve itself.

That's the thing, raising salaries won't solve the issue. Why? Because it doesn't solve the issue of supply. Demand won't stagnate or go lower. Once salaries go up the only thing that changes is the price due to higher demand of limited housing units, leading to the same situation. The problem is with multiple city halls. They refuse to add more residential zones let alone high density residential zones.

https://shift.newco.co/letter-of-resignation-from-the-palo-a...

Palo Alto is just one example. People need to raise the issue with elected officials, that they want more zoning for higher density residential.

That isn't a reasonable expectation. Morally speaking, companies should be expected to pay market rate for the job and anything above that is charity.

>> It's news when some of the biggest and wealthiest companies in the us do not pay their staff (regardless of work, regardless of contractor status) a livable wage.

> That isn't a reasonable expectation. Morally speaking, companies should be expected to pay market rate for the job and anything above that is charity.

You're seriously equating the unlivable "market rate" with the moral choice? You've got to be trolling.

Morally speaking, if your company can't afford to pay all of its employees a liveable wage, then it doesn't deserve to exist.

This is true and it's largely hidden by welfare costs that are shouldered by other taxpayers. If your company isn't paying a living wage then you owe a debt to society because they're literally picking up the tab.

Like every private golf course in Los Angeles?

They aren't Facebook employees though, they are employees of a company that provides these types of services for many places.

It's somewhat like FB being responsible for the A/C repairman being paid a fair wage by the HVAC company that Facebook uses to maintain the equipment in their campus.

Semantics. If you're working in Facebook's offices for a large majority of your hours, you're effectively working for Facebook. They've just added the middle man to avoid paying decent wages.

Your HVAC worker who may spend 4 hours a month on the Facebook campus is different from someone whose daily job is to clean Facebook's headquarters.

Building Maintenance and HVAC techs spend a lot more than four hours a month on the campus they support. Or landscaping businesses for example. Or security guards.

I just don't see how the building that you work in defines who your employer is. There's lots of counterexamples for that.

If I own a business, and don't want to have expertise, training, etc, in food service, laundry, security guards, landscaping, etc...I should be able to get a company to do that for me. That company has expertise in hiring, training, regulatory compliance, etc. They are delivering that service to many companies, not just me. Their employees might even be transferred from one client to another. They charge me whatever the going rate for that sort of thing is. They then pay their employees however they do. If they are underpaying their employees, that's an issue, but not one that's my issue to solve. That is, barring some odd thing where my company, specifically, is using some unusual kind of leverage to NOT pay market rates for this service. I see no difference in whether that service happens on my campus or somewhere else.

Employment is not thus defined. If I am a salesman responsible for 1 particularly important client for my company and spend almost all my time at the client's office, am I suddenly the client's employee, and they should pay me decent wages?

Well no, the company would still be a net positive to the employee. Without the company, the employee would be making an even lower wage or unemployed.

Define “liveable”. Then ask yourself why you defined it that way.

So, if I boil down your argument perhaps a bit too much: because everyone else pays a wage that requires someone to work 2-3 jobs to put a roof over their family's head and food in their bellies, it's morally right for Facebook to do the same thing?

Perhaps my own morals are jacked up, but something seems really wrong there.

Morally, Facebook would realize that it has all the power in this situation and use its position to act for the good of everyone involved. Squeezing an employee to see how little you can get away with paying them, especially when this makes their living conditions much worse, is immoral.

I doubt that the contract FB has with the cafeteria services provider specifies individual wages, or even the number and type of positions.

It is more likely specifying things like how many people they have to feed, standards around variety of food, selection, etc.